The unpowered fact

[larryhammer]

It's really hard to stamp out a good myth. Myths have story, making them more powerful than mere facts. I'm talking about myths like:

• In the 1950s, neurologists thought that only 10% of the brain's capacity was used (neurologists determined that when we're not engaged in anything (brain at rest), about 10% of the brain is in use; that when we do different things, different other parts of the brain are used; and that over all possible activities, we use all parts of it) or


• The brain is divided into logical/creative sides (no study has ever shown more than a mild statistical bias for types of activities and side, and most of the recent ones have come close to entirely erasing that bias) or


• Victorians were more prudish than the generations before or after (they knew, accurately, that their standards of behavior were more liberal than their grandparents' during the Regency; they also openly discussed birth control, the first time this was remotely considered acceptable) or


• According to current theories of aerodynamics, bumblebees can't fly (which, actually, is true — but only if you assume fixed wings; as soon as they beat, you can get them flying) or


• Columbus argued that the world was round, and thus you could get to China by sailing west from Spain (he argued that it was smaller than commonly believed, and thus shorter to go west instead of east around Africa; all educated people in the West from the classical Greeks on knew the earth is round — it was even Church doctrine — and the size Columbus argued against was right) or


• The nuclear family of the 1950s is how American families always were, and we've been deviating from that ever since (the 50s were the aberration, and by moving to more free-form families, we've been returning to the previous norms).

These are all examples I've met in the past month. All hard to correct, unless you can cite an authority like Snopes at someone — and even then, that corrects only one mythically engaged brain at a time. This is because the popular versions have story (even the 10% one, because it leads into the question of what the other 90% is doing). We are pattern-finding primates, and will find patterns even when they aren't there — thus, astrology; thus, gamblers' lore; thus, WMD in Iraq; thus, myths like the above.

Something to keep in mind when trying to disabuse people of cherished, but incorrect, beliefs. It really helps to give the correct facts a story, with a power as strong as the counterfactual story's. (Also something to keep in mind when creating your own stories.)

<glyph of trying not to jump up and down and shout THERE IS NO LEFT BRAIN/RIGHT BRAIN DIVISION! THERE ISN'T! THERE ISN'T!>

---L.

Comments

[jankenstein.livejournal.com]

You could also get someone to watch the most excellent "Bullshit", which is Penn & Teller's debunking show on Showtime. My personal favorite was Feng Shui. Now I like rearranging the furniture from time to time myself, but it doesn't mystically put more money in my pocket or cure any of my ails.

[larryhammer]

That's another good authority. Though it appeals more to people already willing to challenge their own assumptions.

---L.

[randimason.livejournal.com]

And apparently the Disinformation (http://www.disinfo.com/) series is similar, although I'd have to consult DB for more details.

[xopher-vh.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't know the ones about the Victorians or Columbus. Learn something new every day. I knew about the 1950's nuclear family (no nukes!).

The problem with Bullshit is that they sometimes promulgate bullshit of their own...caught them in one on their recycling show. Also they select their data, and show you only the most asinine proponents of whatever they're trying to debunk. This is particularly annoying when you AGREE with Penn and Teller, because it's embarrassing.

I rejected Feng Shui because they want me to get rid of all my spider plants. Since I KNOW having live plants around is good for me, and spider plants are the only ones that seem to be immune to my black thumb, down with Feng Shui! say I. :-)

I'd call Astrology a hyperintellectual scrying tool. It's not that the planets send rays at you that affect your behavior; it's that looking at the piles (and piles and piles) of information it gives you, your brain is likely to find something useful -- probably something you already knew, but needed to have confirmed by an "outside" source in order to trust it. This can have great practical use, if approached with care. This requires "wearing" the belief that the Zodiac and planetary influences are real, if only for an hour or so. Flexibility of mind is a very helpful trait, I find.

Newspaper horoscopes are pure crap. Any astrologer who doesn't make hir living writing them will tell you so. (Does anyone really believe that 1/12 of the population has "a good day for starting a new romance" all at once? Or that there are only 12 kinds of day people can have at any given time? If so, refer them to me; I have some lovely beach property in Punta Gorda, FL to sell.)

[larryhammer]

Oh, hey, Chris.

The fun thing about the Columbus-argued-against-flat-earth one is that it's a purely American myth — tell a European that, and they'll be baffled, because they've never heard of it. It's been pretty convincingly shown that the story was started by Washington Irving, in one of his historical sketches, which is how it got American currency only.

I can respect the mindset of looking at divinations not for themselves but for your own attitude towards them, as a way of probing your own state. Sometimes I even take that attitude (such as when our Sometimes Roommate casts I Ching for us). But for that to work for me, it needs more of a stochastic element than even full-blown astrology has.

---L.

[xopher-vh.livejournal.com]

The divinatory value of the I Ching, IMO, comes from the yarrow-stalk counting game used to determine the lines of the hexagram. I don't remember the details, but it involves a lot of repetitive physical motion, enough to produce an altered mental state by the time you go through the whole process six times. Then when you look the text up in the book, it has some chance of meaning something to you.

Needless to say, this doesn't work if you use a random-number generator to pick a hexagram.

We are gullible too!

[(Anonymous)]

I think you give Europeans too much credit. Most French people in my experience also believe that myth that nobody knew that Earth was round before Columbus.

That myth has a long history of Middle-Age-bashing by Positivist historians in the nineteenth century.

My favorite debunked myth is that story according to which Eskimos have hundreds of differents words for snow. I believed it until reading Steve Pinker.

Phersu

Re: We are gullible too!

[larryhammer]

Interesting. My information must be in error.

Middle-Ages bashing has a long history, of course, dating back to the earliest generation of the Rennaissance. Just as Victorian bashing dates to the earliest generation of Modernists.

---L.

Curious myths about the Middle Ages

[shelly-rae.livejournal.com]

(Hi Larry, I wandered over from Electrolite. Pleased to meet you.)

Whenever I teach Chaucer I start with a "debunking the myths of the middle ages" discussion. My top two favorite things everyone knows is true about that time period is...
Iron chastity belts were used to control women.
Lords had "first night" rights to take the virginity of any peasant girl getting married.

And then there is the story of lemmings leaping to their deaths...
Anon.

Re: Curious myths about the Middle Ages

[larryhammer]

I haven't actually met chastity belts and droit du segnoir (sp?) in a while, I confess. And for the past couple years, whenever someone mentions lemmings, someone else mentions, "And you know? Those were faked" -- so it looks like that one, at least, is being countered. Though books like World Lit Only by Fire don't help.

And welcome -- pull up a chair and sit down. There's iced tea and ginger beer in the fridge.

---L.